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Universal IPSec VPN client for Android 4.0

The preview of the NCP Secure Client requires Android 4.0.x
Secure communications specialist NCP Engineering plans to make Android more attractive to corporate users by releasing an IPSec VPN client for the mobile platform. The app implements the IKE v1/2 IPSec standards, PKCS#12-based certificates, XAUTH and pre-shared keys. NCP says that it functions with any gateway: the company explicitly mentions Cisco, Juniper, Lancom and SonicWall products. A free preview version of the NCP Secure Client, which will cease to function on 30 June, is available at Google Play, formerly known as the Android Market.

Up until version 4.0 of Google's open source Android operating system (Ice Cream Sandwich), the VPN client supplied with Android didn't support many popular gateways, including those by Cisco. While instructions on how to make older Android devices use these gateways do exist, the suggested approaches require devices to be rooted. In Ice Cream Sandwich, different problems with the VPN implementation have existed since version 4.0.3.